This module is designed to introduce students to the principles, aims and fundamental approaches involved in the analysis of spoken and written discourse, by which is meant the study of language within its contexts of use. Traditionally, for language teachers language analysis has primarily meant structural grammar. Over the last two decades, however, there has been a fundamental shift in the study of language, away from looking at decontextualised structures in isolated sentences and towards looking at language functioning as communication. This has been reflected in foreign language teaching in the rise of communicative teaching approaches. The main aim of this course is to introduce participants to those aspects of spoken and written discourse which are particularly relevant for the teaching of English as a foreign language, and to equip them with some of the tools and techniques needed to in vestigate naturally-occurring English texts. The module further aims to encourage students to consider the implications of discourse analysis for the teaching of English language.

Students will:

• gain an overview of key issues and concepts in the field of discourse analysis, which they can then go on to develop in greater depth in later taught modules which deal with discourse analysis and language teaching

• be able to perform analyses of important discourse features in naturally-occurring spoken and written texts

• develop a solid understanding of how language works at the level of whole texts and within different contexts

Seminar -

Seminars include a mixture of mini-lectures, discussions (based around prior reading), and discourse analytical tasks.